dunbar11
Author: Unknown
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Essay XI

Of Fashions that Predominate Among Various Tribes of Mankind.

The magnitude of external annoyance being variable with the maxims of political oeconomy, and the rules of civil life, it is the prerogative of every people to hold the balance of good and evil, and to raise or to depress the scale of their own felicity.

To the abuse of this prerogative, not to any unalterable
constitution of things, may be ascribed whatever is more wretched or humiliating in the condition of human society. Absurdities of various description in artificial manners, are often destructive of health and vigour, and even tend to divest the natural form of its symmetry and perfection.

The custom of painting the body with such rude materials as the savage life affords, is a practice which, in the infancy of society, appears to have been almost universal. It is resorted to at first as an obvious preservative against the inclemency of the seasons, the impression of the sun, molestation from insects, or other external annoyance. But this invention, like every other, was susceptible of refinement. No longer adjusted to the standard of conveniency alone, it became subject to the caprice and vicissitude of fashion; and the embellishment of the outward person, which was at first little attended to, or regarded as a collateral
consideration, came in time to be the principal object. Such fantastical decoration are worn as ensigns of dignity, and serve as so many badges of distinction among savage tribes. This invention may be traced up to remote antiquity in the customs of the European nations. It was reduced to an art among the antient Britons; and the Caledonians, the most antient inhabitants of the Northern parts of the island, were, from their being peculiarly addicted to this art, denominated Picts by the Romans. Not content with such representations as were practicable by the colouring of paint alone, those rude nations often inscribed their designs with a weightier hand, and by actual incisions into the body rendered the impressions indelible. Thus a practice, at first innocent or salutary, became, by degrees, pernicious; and while it aimed at farther decoration, or at emblematical expression, tended in reality to deform the species.

By the progress of society, such fashions have long since disappeared in Europe. But, if we survey the condition of rude nations in various corners of the world, we find the human frame degraded by customs still more violent and unnatural. Nor is it in the option of individuals to embrace, or to resist, such customs.

The violence is frequently, by the imposition of parents, rendered almost coeval with existence. The body, in its infant state, more pliant and ductile, is more easily divested of its just
proportions, and the limbs and members are then capable of being moulded into a variety of unnatural and artificial forms, impracticable in maturer years. If distortions, then, of feature and person, are thus early introduced, more serious and extensive consequences may possibly arise from the same source.

When the violence is directed, as among the Chinese and some other nations, to the extremities of the body, situated at a distance from the principal organ of sensation, the effect on the animal oeconomy is more supportable, and the vitals of the constitution probably elude the injury; but, unfortunately, the impression is often made where the constitution is most vulnerable, and the more sensible parts sustain a shock annoying to the whole nervous system. Among one people, to flatten the dimensions of the head; among another, to render it more convex, parents have recourse to the most shocking expedients, and the natural guardians of infancy become its chief tormentors. The names by which certain Indian tribes in North America have been distinguished, are expressive of such unnatural characteristics. The Caribbees of the West Indies, by contrivances and applications of art nearly similar, have acquired a cast of physiognomy altogether peculiar.

The Indians of Asia are not entirely exempted from the same odious abuses; but the principal seat of the enormity is certain regions of Africa, where the art of disfiguring the human person, is almost the only art which has made such progress among the rude
inhabitants, as to mark their departure from a state of nature.

In such deplorable fashions, which stifle the voice of nature, the sufferers, and the authors of the sufferings, almost distort the natural form with an avowed purpose of deranging the
intellectuals of man, is a conduct so flagitious and enormous as has never stained the manners of savage and untutored tribes; yet, not many ages ago, even this enormity existed in the manners of Europe, where, in various instances, the forming of fools for the entertainment of the great, was the ultimate end proposed in mutilating the human figure.

The recital of such examples fills humanity with horror; and the possibility of their existence would hardly be admitted in a cultivated period, did not history establish the facts upon incontestible authority, and number them among the corruptions which are found in so many societies of men, to degrade the dignity of our species.

There is a variety of other customs among rude tribes, which take their rise from the illusions of imagination. In observing the gradations of colour among the races of mankind, our ideas of beauty are often entirely governed, or greatly influenced, by a regard to the most general form of nature we are accustomed to contemplate. Among a nation of Blacks, the White; among a nation of Whites, the Black was never the approved complexion. The

Hottentots, an ambiguous race, equally allied to either extreme, are at pains to deepen the shade of black, as if to maintain a conformity with the prevailing complexion of Africa. On the other hand, the Moors of Barbary, the counterpart of the Hottentots in the northern hemisphere, who possess, like them, the medium of complexion, discover little predilection for either extreme, which is owing probably to an almost equal correspondence with African and European nations. Upon the same principle, the copper colour of the Americans is regarded among them as a criterion of beauty; and it seems to be the object of art, by painting the face with vermilion, to maintain, in all its perfection, the predominant complexion of the Indian race.

Even the universal principles of taste, when not duly regulated may lead to egregious abuse. Unequal degrees of beauty, of elegance, and of strength, enter into the various contexture of the human body; and all attempts are vain to superinduce, by violence or art, that perfection which is denied by nature.

Constitutional blemishes or defects may be heightened by too eager a desire to abolish them; and by the violent substitution of other proportions and lineaments than are consistent with the primeval configuration of the parts, though more conformable, perhaps, to some ideal standard of perfection. But some of the more flagrant examples of violence done the person, to be met with in the customs of rude tribes, are neither authorised nor suggested by any perception of beauty. They are designed, in reality, to create opposite emotions, and are dictated by the ferocity of warlike people, on purpose to confound their enemies by appearances scarcely human. The gentler sex, whose constant aim is to improve the beauty of the outward form, and who subdue mankind only by their charms, even in the African climates, never deviate so far from nature. In the island of Bissao, near to the river Gambia, the matrons are dressed in decent attire; and persons of the young, though without all sort of apparel, are not unadorned. The degrees of embellishment indicate rank and condition; and the eldest daughter of the reigning monarch is distinguished from the other ladies of the court by elegance of painting, and the richness of her bracelets. But all the happier refinements of fancy are disregarded in the apparatus of war.

The Giagas, those bloody cannibals of Africa, who are regardless of natural as of moral beauty, assume the most infernal aspect to render themselves more formidable to other tribes. The same principle authorises the abuse of person among various Indian tribes in North America; and authorised it, according to the Roman Historian, [Tacit. de Mor. Ger.] among the tribe of the antient Germans. But an aspect so tremendous to a foreign enemy, may become venerable among people of the same tribe. The dignity of the expression is more considered than the deformity of the picture.

The beautiful is absorbed in the sublime; and the spectacle, how odious soever in itself, is endured as descriptive of the degrees of heroism and martial valour; virtues chiefly respected in a rude age.

Religious fanaticism, it may also be observed, is frequently another source of the most wretched debasement. Penances, mortifications, Monkish severities, and a number of flagrant observances, in the ritual of superstition, that annoy our frame, hae, to the disgrace of the world, been deemed meritorious in the sight of Heaven; as if one species of guild could be expiated by another; or, as if to deform and abuse our nature, could ever be acceptable to the Author of all beauty and excellence.

But it is not necessary to carry our researches anxiously into the principles which have concurred to the introduction and establishment of so many absurd customs among mankind. It is sufficient to observe, that the customs themselves, from what fountain soever they flow, are often attended with consequences no less destructive than odious. Thus what arises from human folly may become undistinguishable from the original workmanship; or rather, certain distinctions, at first adventitious, may become the characteristics of a tribe, and even be in part transmissible and hereditary to future generations. The customs indeed under review belong chiefly to an unpolished state of society; but they are often succeeded by others of a tendency somewhat similar. The swarthing of infants, the confinement of dress, and other absurd practices in our oeconomy, unprecedented among Barbarians, might be mentioned as counterparts of the same violence among polished nations. In general, perhaps, the hardy discipline of early times is more auspicious to health, vigour, and symmetry of form, than the more refined culture and softer habits of a luxurious age. But without running the parallel of public manners in different periods of civil progress, it may be affirmed, that some of the grosser and more heinous abuses we have here remarked, are irrecoverably destructive of the human figure, and perhaps remotely touch the springs of our intellectual frame. There being then such a variety of effects, immediately of physical production, which can be traced up to a moral original; it is proper to distinguish and separate that order of second causes which is regulated by the resolutions and conduct of men, from the independent and immutable influence of external things.

But moral sentiment, exclusive of its breaking forth into action, by its silent and internal movements in the human breast, affects, in no small degree, the beauty, health, and perfection of our organized system; and this connection of things, though more rarely the object of attention, ought not to be overlooked in explaining the diversity of appearances in the various tribes of mankind.